Haeyoon Miller's Family Gets More Than $1 mil from Newport Beach for Death by Fallen Tree

The Newport Beach City Council agreed to pay more than $1 million to the parents of a successful businesswoman crushed by a falling tree in September 2011.

The council actually approved the payments to the family of Haeyoon Miller in April, but they were not disclosed until Monday's meeting because written agreements that were part of the settlement had not been finalized before then.

A 29-year-old businesswoman who came to the U.S. as a child musical prodigy from South Korea, Miller was pinned in her car by a 60-foot tree that fell as she was waiting at a red light on Irvine Avenue in Costa Mesa on Sept. 16, 2011. Under contract, Newport Beach maintains trees in that area that borders both cities.

Her parents sued the city and the contractor that cared for the trees, claiming the 10-ton eucalyptus that crushed the woman was rotten. The city later had crews remove about 100 trees from the median.

Despite the settlement, neither the city nor the contractor have acknowledged any wrongdoing.